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Narcissism
Ricky Gervais and the Comedy of Narcissism
Gervais's best characters both skewer and sympathize with narcissism.
Posted November 23, 2020
Ricky Gervais proves once again that the funniest humor can spring forth from the truest pain. With shows like The Office and Extras, he mixes and mocks various conventional genres with virtuosity, veering between the poles of comedy and tragedy. Gervais, like Sacha Baron Cohen, is yet another example of the Brits’ brilliance for irony and the ways it can disarm while decloaking unappetizing truths about human nature and life. Gervais’s humor is of a more subdued sort, quietly building momentum as it chips away at your foundations, as opposed to Baron Cohen’s in your face manipulations, but both result in your fanny hitting the floor.
In particular, Gervais’s target of choice is the culture of narcissism that pervades today’s society and exposing the essential fragility and stupidity at the heart of this enterprise, while also amplifying empathy for why people are so prone to the pursuit of themselves.
Gervais and his partner-in-crime Stephen Merchant co-wrote the original version of The Office, a BBC missive that captured the condition of most modern everyday folks stuck in the world of work. Disguised as a “documentary,” the overt slapstick silliness juxtaposed with dry banality won over many on both sides of the Atlantic and spawned the inevitable and now also classic U.S. follow-up. While The Office worked on several levels (as a social commentary on corporate culture intersecting with the rise of social justice awareness, as a romantic comedy with the ambiguous relationship between the engaged secretary and one of the co-workers), it seemed the heart of the show was the preening insecurity and narcissism of the boss, David Brent.
David Brent was a brilliant parody and character study of what a boss is or can become in this day and age. From the fiendishly idiotic way he stares and mugs for the “documentary camera,” you know from the start that he is desperate for attention, desperate to prove that he is the “boss.” Of course, this desperation, which becomes an ongoing theme and source of humor on the show, ultimately undermines his authority and ruins him.
He loutishly indulges in sexist and racist humor, exaggerated to wonderful and painful degrees, and commits social faux pas after social faux pas. He scoffs at his own authority figures who are ahead of him on the corporate totem pole and stews with jealousy, while simultaneously alienating his underlings. Yet despite his self-centeredness, there are no teeth (or real cruelty) to his ambition; he is so afraid of anyone’s disapproval he cannot even fire anyone from their job. He is soft-bellied in every sense of the word.
As a result, Ricky Gervais does the impossible and makes David Brent somehow likable despite his social ineptitude and self-absorption; we know that he will never become what he wants, which makes him inherently pathetic. He is all too human when he exhibits his frustrations and foibles in plain view.
When he tries to win over a new group of workers during a merger, he prepares a set monologue of jokes to win them over, only to have it fall terribly flat. To add insult to injury, his own boss handing over the reins to him is in comparison totally suave and has the floor laughing heartily. When he somehow is asked to give a corporate motivational speech by an independent organization (by virtue of his job title apparently), he flummoxes it to hysterical degrees. His thrill at having a nugget of ego validation swells into delusional, tragic proportions, and his motivational speech becomes a thrilling trainwreck, complete with an exercise routine. He has an amiable streak of rebellion as well, albeit fed still by his thirst for attention, as when he converts a routine occupational safety workshop into an impromptu acoustic guitar concert.
David Brent’s slide into progressive social absurdity culminates in the now-famous David Brent dance, where at an office “Comic Relief” party, after some inappropriate boasts, he is asked, out of his co-workers’ generosity and in deference to his position, to start to bust a few moves. The resultant bizarre mishmash of the robot, MC Hammer, and Richard Simmons leaves the workers literally speechless. At the end of the series, David Brent is finally fired for his excesses, while dressed in a ridiculous bird costume for the party. It is an oddly sad note, as though one never thought his games would actually catch up with him, that the rules of the conventional adult world would ever have to apply to David Brent’s brand of authority.
The Office epilogue episode is both kind and cruel to David Brent, following up on what happened to the poor bloke after he lost his job. The best part is when he attempts to follow his dreams of becoming a pop star (an even more delusional yet oddly logical extension of the David Brent persona) and makes a hilariously hideous Color Me Badd-style solo music video. Of course, these attempts fall flat, but David Brent, childish and egotistical beyond all measure, catches a lucky break and finds a nice potential girlfriend. We feel that perhaps there is hope for him, that he will grow into a better person after finding the validation he was looking for all along in the form of love.
From the everyday microcosm of a corporate office to the exaggerated realm of the celebrity acting world, Ricky Gervais continues his somehow Dickens-esque themes of human redemption and frailty in his lesser-known but underrated series Extras. The theme of narcissism holds even more water in this celebrity world, the closest thing we have to a modern religion (or rather Greek mythology) in our society.
His main character and alter ego this time is Andy Millman. Andy’s entry into this even more archly hierarchical realm, unlike David Brent, starts flatly at the bottom; he is an “extra,” again desperate for attention, as perhaps is the core of any acting enterprise, this need for external validation. He starts out wanting just a line or even a word of dialogue, scheming and scrounging on the sidelines to get these little leftover bits. His sidekick is the friendly yet ditsy Maggie, a Scottish hippie chick of sorts, whose main goal throughout the show is basically to get laid.
The layers of irony and self-parody work to interesting and reverberating effect throughout this series, with real major celebrities willing to do sendups of what some celebrities probably do behave like, but to, of course, satirical and exaggerated effect. Kate Winslet is foul-mouthed and desperate for an Oscar; Ben Stiller is a psychotic power-hungry sadist; Daniel Radcliffe flings around condoms; Patrick Stewart is generous but a dirty old man. In the first season, Andy is scrappy enough to win a few lines here and there (going so far as to flat-out bribe a wartime widower behind the scenes of one film), while still maintaining a sense of himself as an ambitious loser, thanks to various insults to his ego that occur during the show. Andy finally catches a break (via the horny Patrick Stewart) and gets the BBC to read and then accept his idea for a sitcom.
The second season follows Andy’s disappointments after what Ricky Gervais termed his “getting what you wish for.” The sitcom comes out in inevitably contorted, popularized form into a weak and canned comedy called “When the Whistle Blows,” and Andy Millman has to rely on the sight gags of bad glasses and wigs and a catchphrase “Are you having a laugh?” Although the sitcom does become a modest hit, and Andy reaches perhaps C-level celebrity at best, he is tortured by the fact he wanted to be a serious artiste, a real dramatic actor. (And the one time he is invited to do a more serious role, he runs off the stage because it involves him playing a homosexual.) The show is also critically panned and is even overtly racist at times and corny as hell. He realizes he had to sell out to get his foot in the door, and now can’t help the path that has opened up ahead of him.
Again, Andy’s situation illuminates those of many of us who are stuck in similar straits, where we want more than we have, but on our own terms, and life just doesn’t work that way. And what we want may not be what’s good for us in the end. Wanting nothing but fame and ambition and success can come at a price.
A New York Times essay by Benedict Carey from 2007 on the pursuit of perfectionism illustrates how seemingly noble and straightforward all-American values like ambition can actually lead to depression, even suicide, for those who take it too far and use it as some form of self-hatred or self-denial. Andy cannot overcome certain blatant things that are highly valued in the shallow world of celebrity, like reliance on popular, banal forms of humor or physical looks (David Bowie sings him a song called “Poor Little Fat Man”) or wealth and power. Why he wishes to pursue such things is an important question at hand.
The Extras finale tries to address that question, with at times unnerving results. Andy becomes increasingly and openly angry and despondent at his situation and decides to bite the hands that fed him. He fires his albeit crackheaded and incompetent, poop-forking manager Darren for a more suave but shady sort of agent who makes all sort of false promises to him. He quits his semi-successful show.
His subsequent attempts at seeking respect and more fame blow up in his face, unfortunately. He attempts to audition for the artsy film Byron, starring Clive Owen, and wraps his gut in a stretch corset which explodes in the midst of his audition interview. At the same time, poor Maggie (who has spent most of the series pursuing her ongoing schoolgirl crushes on attractive men of varying degrees of celebrity) decides to become an extra for Clive Owen. Her role is as a poor prostitute, but Clive (in yet another too-funny cameo parodying massive egotism) finds her insufficiently attractive for him in real life and insults her blatantly in front of everyone. Maggie finally wills up some pride and quits the set, but is so upset she decides to quit acting as well. Afterward, she can only find a job cleaning bathrooms and has to move into a dismal apartment (which incidentally looks like your typical $2,500/month shoebox studio in Manhattan).
She stays faithful to Andy but then watches as his resentment and depression after being rejected for the Byron role turn into arrogance and meanness. He disses an extra who comes up to him, much as he had to others in the past. He insults Maggie and refuses to see Darren. For all his newfound, bigshot cockiness, Andy remains largely unemployed and is left picking up roles he never thought he’d accept, like playing a drooling sea slug alien on Doctor Who.
He hits the ultimate bottom of the barrel when he finally agrees to do Celebrity Big Brother. It becomes a tragic circus of celebrity carcasses. Andy erupts on the show into a spontaneous and angry, truthful monologue on the vicissitudes of celebrity and the audiences that feed them, and what it says about ourselves and our society. And here, we realize that Andy has, like many people (and in many works of art and literature, Great Gatsby, The Godfather movies, even Showgirls), pursued a dream that was a dead-end in and of itself, because he wasn’t able to appreciate what he had in front of him. There is something in human nature that helps us grow, this hunger for more, but can also hurt us when it goes unchecked and runs into the limitations of reality and even mortality.
As the ultimate joke, the "Big Brother" monologue becomes a riotous sensation, and Andy’s door is flung wide open for the path he always wanted, for any type of fame ahead. And he rejects it, runs away to meet Maggie, and decides to travel somewhere and disappear, although what lies ahead for them remains uncertain.
For the first time in his shows, with the Extras Christmas Special, Gervais seems to lay open some of the ugliness of the wounds he usually dances around with comic grace, without shading or gradations, and the effect is surprising. Andy becomes an authentic and all-too-familiar type of grumpy, unhappy jerk. Maggie pays a terrible price for her integrity but also lives the wandering, impoverished life that most at her level of intellect and self-sufficiency really would end up living. This Christmas special isn’t so jolly and has the same type of underlying sadness that the other holiday staples It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol (or even A Charlie Brown Christmas) underscore.
After all, the holidays are partly about reflecting on the year that has passed all too quickly, and the years before that, and wondering what lies ahead in the New Year. It’s a turning point, a crossroads, and reflection can sometimes lead to unpleasant realizations (giving the holidays its other reputation for worsening depressions). But it’s also a time for gratitude, for thankfulness and realizing that, in most cases, you are lucky to have what you have and can only do your best. You need to seek balance and internal harmony. To blindly seek more and more does not necessarily lead to happiness.
And in the end, we just need to take everything with a huge grain of salt. As Shakespeare noted, all the world’s a stage. Gervais’s talent lies in his keen knowledge and plays on this central metaphor. He has the uncanny ability to make the absurd humane, to disarm the follies of egotism with humor, and to make us all recognize familiar tendencies in ourselves so that we don’t just fall into sourpussdom a la Andy Millman. Are you having a laugh, indeed.
Copyright 2020 Jean Kim
